Nim Xo'l

El destacado lingüista k'iche' Sam Colop (2008: 150n240) traduce el nombre del topónimo Nim Xo'l como "Gran Hondonada" en español. El investigador k'iche' está de acuerdo con el antropólogo Dennis Tedlock (1996: 342), quien afirma que el sitio Nim Xo'l, uno de los lugares por los cuales la gente k'iche' pasa en su migración histórica del oriente antes de llegar a Chi Pixab', es otro nombre para Nim Xob' Karchaj. Se ubica en la región del moderno San Pedro Carchá.

In modern K'iche', -xo'l refers to a "space between" in prepositional phrases, e.g. chuxo'l le keb' ja "between the two houses." The K'iche' authors of the Popol Wuj explain that Nim Xo'l is a space through which the K'iche' people pass in their historical migration from the West to the Guatemalan highlands. Whereas K'iche' scholar Sam Colop (2008: 150n240) interprets the name as "great hollow" and follows anthropologist Dennis Tedlock (1996: 342) in locating the mountain in the present-day region of San Pedro Carchá, anthropologist Allen J. Christenson (2007) translates this name quite differently. Christenson reads Nim Xo'l as "Honor and Respect," conflating what Colop and Tedlock treat as the space of the ballgame (Nim Xo'b; n253) with the mountain that K'iche' ancestors cross before arriving at Chi Pixab' (Nim Xo'l, n575). He identifies Nim Xo'l with "the place where Hun Hunahpu and his sons played ball," and asserts that therefore "the origin of the progenitors is defined as the homeland of the patron heroes described in the first half of the Popol Vuh text." He adds (n253), "the lords of Xibalba complained that those who were playing ball above their heads did not give them proper 'honor' or 'respect,' the same two words which comprise the name of the ballcourt in these lines. Nimxor is listed in the Annals of the Cakchiquels as a place near Carchah in the Alta Verapaz region, thus this is likely a play on words (Recinos and Goetz 1953, 64)."